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| EINSATZGRUPPEN TRIALS
The Einsatzgruppen (special action death squads) trial was the 9th of 12 trials for war crimes that the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Nuremberg, Germany. These 12 trials were all held before U.S. Military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms. The 12 U.S. Trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials", or more formally as the "Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal". The Einsatzgruppen (mission groups) were special units of the SD (security service, responsible for monitoring domestic opinion, surveillance, espionage). These were veritable death squads, operating in general behind the front line in Eastern Europe. They indiscriminately killed Jews and non-cooperating civilians in large numbers. From 1941 to 1943 alone, they murdered more than 1 million Jews and tens of thousands of "partisans", Gypsies, disabled people, Political Commissars, and others. The 24 defendants in this trial were all officers of these Einsatzgruppen and faced severe mass murder charges. The tribunal stated in its judgment: "...in this case the defendants are not simply accused of planning or directing wholesale killings through channels. They are not charged with sitting in an office hundreds and thousands of miles away from the slaughter. It is asserted with particularity that these men were in the field actively superintending, controlling, directing, and taking an active part in the bloody harvest." The judges in this case, heard before Military Tribunal 11-A were:
The Chief of Council for the Prosecution was Telford Taylor, the Chief Prosecutor in this case was Benjamin B. Ferencz. The indictment was initially filed on July 3 and then was ammended on July 29, 1947 to also include the defendants Steimle, Braune, Hansch, Klingelhofer, and von Radetzky. The trial lasted from Sept. 29, 1947 until April 10, 1948. The accused faced the following charges:
All of the defendants were charged with all 3 counts. All of the defendants pleaded "not guilty". The Tribunal found all the defendants guilty on all counts against them, with the exception of Rheul and Graf, who were found guilty only of count #3. |
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The Defendants
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Otto Ohlendorf Sentenced to DEATH Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Gruppenfuhrer, member of the SD, Commanding Officer of Einsatzgruppe D. |
Erich Naumann Sentenced to DEATH - Executed June 7, 1951 GuGuilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Brigadefuhrer, member of the SD, Commanding Officer of Einsatzgruppe B. |
Paul Blobel Sentenced to DEATH - Executed June 7, 1951 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Standartenfuhrer, member of the SD, Commanding Officer of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C. |
Walter Blume Sentenced to DEATH - Executed June 7, 1951 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Standartenfuhrer, member of the SD and the Gestapo, Commanding Officer of Sonderkommando 7a of Einsatzgruppe B. |
Martin Sandberger Sentenced to DEATH - Commuted to Life Imprisonment in 1955 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Standartenfuhrer, member of the SD, Commanding Officer of Sonderkommando 1a of Einsatzgruppe A. |
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Willy Seibert Sentenced to DEATH - Commuted to 15 Years in 1955 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Standartenfuhrer, member of the SD, Deputy Chief of Einsatzgruppe D. |
Eugen Steimle Sentenced to DEATH - Commuted to 20 Years in 1955 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Standartenfuhrer, member of the SD, Commanding Officer of Sonderkommando 7a of Einsatzgruppe B and of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C. |
Ernst Biberstein Sentenced to DEATH - Commuted to Lifetime Imprisonment in 1955 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Obersturmbannfuhrer, member of the SD and the Gestapo, Commanding Officer of Sonderkommando 11b of Einsatzgruppe D. |
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Werner Braune Sentenced to DEATH - Executed June 7, 1951 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Obersturmbannfuhrer, member of the SD and the Gestapo, Commanding Officer of Sonderkommando 11b of Einsatzgruppe D. |
Walter Hansch Sentenced to DEATH - Commuted to 15 Years in 1955 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Obersturmbannfuhrer, member of the SD, Commanding Officer of Sonderkommando 4b of Einsatzgruppe C. |
Adolf Ott Sentenced to Lifetime Imprisonment, Commuted to Lifetime Imprisonment in 1955 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Obersturmbannfuhrer, member of the SD, Commanding Officer of Sonderkommando 7b of Einsatzgruppe B. |
Eduard Strauch Sentenced to DEATH - Handed over to Belgian authorities, he died in hospital. (During the arraignment he suffered an epileptic attack. His defense later tried to get him off on medical grounds, but the court felt that his prior testimony was coherent and showed no reason why he wasn't capable of standing trial) Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Obersturmbannfuhrer, member of the SD, Commanding Officer of Sonderkommando 12 of Einsatzgruppe D. |
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Waldemar Klingelhofer Sentenced to DEATH - Commuted to Lifetime Imprisonment in 1955 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Sturmbannfuhrer, member of the SD, Commanding Officer of Sonderkommando 7b of Einsatzgruppe B. |
Heinz Schubert Sentenced to DEATH - Commuted to Lifetime Imprisonment in 1955 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Obersturmbannfuhrer, member of the SD, Officer in Einsatzgruppe D. |
Heinz Jost Sentenced to Lifetime Imprisonment - Commuted to 10 years in 1955 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Brigadefuhrer, member of the SD and the Gestapo, Commanding Officer of Einsatzgruppe A. |
Gustav Nosske Sentenced to Lifetime Imprisonment - Commuted to 10 years in 1955 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Obersturmbannfuhrer, member of the Gestapo, Commanding Officer of Einsatzkommando 12 of Einsatzgruppe D. |
Erwin Schulz Sentenced to 20 years Imprisonment - Commuted to 15 years in 1955 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Brigadefuhrer, member of the Gestapo, Commanding Officer ofEinsatzkommando 5 of Einsatzgruppe C. |
Franz Six Sentenced to 20 years Imprisonment - Commuted to 15 years in 1955 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Brigadefuhrer, member of the SD, Commanding Officer of Vorkommando Moscow of Einsatzgruppe B. |
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Waldemar von Radetzky Sentenced to 20 years Imprisonment - RELEASED in 1955 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Sturmbannfuhrer, member of the SD, Deputy Chief of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C. |
Lothar Fendler Sentenced to 10 years Imprisonment - Reduced to 8 years in 1955 Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Member of Criminal Org. SS Sturmbannfuhrer, member of the SD, Deputy Chief of Sonderkommando 4b of Einsatzgruppe C. |
Feliz Reuhl Sentenced to 10 years Imprisonment - RELEASED in 1955 Guilty of Member of Criminal Org. (the Tribunal felt as a subaltern officer, he was not reponsible for atrocities commited by Einsatzgruppe D and in no position to prevent them) SS Hauptsturmfuhrer, member of the Gestapo, Officer of Sonderkommando 10b of Einsatzgruppe D. |
Mathias Graf Time Served Guilty of Member of Criminal Org. SS Untersturmbannfuhrer, member of the SD, Officer in Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe D. |
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Emil Hausmann Commited Suicide before the arraignment July 31, 1947 SS Sturmbannfuhrer, member of the SD, Officer in Einsatzkommando 12 of Einsatzgruppe D. |
Otto Rasch Removed from the trial Feb. 5, 1948 due to poor health - he was arraigned separately on Sept. 22, 1947. SS Brigadefuhrer, member of the SD and the Gestapo, Commanding Officer of Einsatzgruppe C. |
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Quotes from the Tribunal's Judgements:
"A crime of such unprecedented brutality and of such inconceivable savagery that the mind rebels against its own thought image and the imagination staggers in the contemplation of a human degredation beyond the power of language to adequately portray." "The number of deaths resulting from the activities with which these defendants have been connected and which the prosecution has set at one million is but an abstract number. One cannot grasp the full cumulative terror of murder one million times repeated." "It is only when this grotesque total is broken down into units capable of mental assimilation can one understand the monstrousness of the things in this trial we are contemplating. One must visualize not one million people but only ten persons - men, women, and children, perhaps all of one family - falling before the executioner's guns. If one million is divided by ten, this scene must happen one hundred thousand times, and as one visualizes the repetitous horror, one begins to understand the meaning of the prosecution's words, 'it is with sorrow and with hope that we here disclose the deliberate slaughter of more than one million innocent and defenseless men, women, and children." Of the 14 death sentences, only 4 were carried out. The others were commuted to prison perms in varying lengths in 1951. In 1958 ALL the convicts in this trial were RELEASED from prison! (I find this MOST distressing!!)
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"[The facts] are so beyond the experience of normal men and the range of man-made phenomena that only the most complete judicial inquiry, and the most exhaustive trial, could verify and confirm them. Although the prinicple accusation is murder, [...] the charge of purposeful homicide in this case reaches such fantastic proportions and surpasses such credible limits that believability must be bolstered with assurance a hundred times repeated."